


strange

by cozyinthere



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Fatal Vore, M/M, Relationship Study, Same size vore, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cozyinthere/pseuds/cozyinthere
Summary: Merle and John have a very strange relationship.





	strange

**Author's Note:**

> So, I didn't use Archive warnings because I wasn't exactly sure how they'd apply, but here's a brief explanation of any triggers if you need (spoilers for the fic, of course): this is fatal vore, although the actual death is not heavily or graphically described. Merle consents to John "trying something new," but does not know that is it vore initially. While he never verbally consents to vore specifically, he does oblige to John's request for him to not struggle. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“You’re back soon, Merle.”

Merle looks across the long black table at his archnemesis, the Hunger, the force that keeps trying to kill his family, at  _ John _ , and shrugs. “Not much else to do around here.”

John laughs a little, the sound coming out a little bit like he has rocks in his mouth. “Fair. Shall we play?” He waves his hand and a chessboard appears in the center of the table, the white pieces facing Merle and the black pieces facing himself. 

Merle nods and slides a pawn forward. “Let’s make it a good game, I probably won’t be back for a while after this one.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

“Is that your question?” 

John’s fingers flit over a pawn before darting back and moving a knight. “Sure, I’m curious.”

“Everyone on the St- everyone’s getting worried, I guess,” Merle says carefully. “I keep jumping back into parlay without seeing them much, so I guess they miss having a healer around or something.”

“Interesting,” John says. His eyes track Merle’s hand as the dwarf pushes another pawn forward. “We’ll have to make it a good, ah,  _ game _ indeed, then.” 

There’s something about the way his voice lingers on ‘game’ that does something unquantifiable to Merle, something that’s been happening more and more over the past couple of cycles, something that keeps Merle coming back to parlay in the hopes that he can confirm that only rivalry, begrudging respect, and possibly even friendship exist in this strange, strange space. 

Merle coughs, buries his face in his elbow in an attempt to hide the flush of his cheeks, and tries to think of a good question. John moves a pawn up and taps his fingers slowly, letting each one fall one by one by one. Index, middle, ring, pinky, over and over again. 

Finally, Merle speaks up. “You keep saying things weirdly. Not in your ‘I’m a giant evil force that’s going to kill you and I have a new theory on how’ way, but something different. What does it mean?”

John purses his lips, smirks slightly, and lets his face fall to neutral, all within three seconds. “It means… you’re a very strange individual, Merle. And I don’t know if I qualify as an individual, per se, but I am certainly quite strange. We met under strange circumstances. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense for me to have strange feelings for you?”

Merle captures one of John’s pawns and stubbornly doesn’t acknowledge the sudden increase of his heart rate. “That doesn’t really answer the question, John.”

“I suppose it doesn’t,” John says. He looks down at the chessboard and sighs before continuing. “Tell you what - I’ll try and give you a better answer after the game. Deal?”

Merle eyes him suspiciously for a moment before shrugging and replying, “Deal.” 

John smiles and slides a bishop out to the center of the board. 

The game lasts for a long time; it’s probably one of their longest yet. Merle is surprised that he doesn’t lose early on, as he’s almost completely distracted by the way John’s words keep repeating in his head.  _ Strange feelings.  _ What the hell is that even supposed to mean?

It certainly couldn’t be any sort of remorse or inclination towards mercy, and it certainly couldn’t be anything along the lines of what Merle’s apparently very horny and very lonely subconscious is suggesting. But what else could it be? Maybe John just hates Merle more than he’s hated anyone else ever before, but even that doesn’t really make sense. 

Merle keeps pondering as the game drags on. Neither he nor John speak until finally, John clears his throat and says, “Check. Wait, no - that’s mate. Good game, Merle.”

Merle finds his eyes caught on the board, where his king is surrounded by John’s pieces, until the board and all of the pieces melt back to wherever they came from. That’s odd - John doesn’t usually bother cleaning up; he tends to just kill Merle and let the parlay room do, well, whatever it does after Merle dies. So why did he take it away now?

“I assume you still want me to attempt to answer your question?” 

Merle tears his eyes up from the table to find John’s eyes locked on him. He forces himself not to squirm under John’s gaze and nods. “I mean, yeah, it’s not like you cleared anything up earlier, Johnny boy.”

John wrinkles his nose at the nickname, but he doesn’t say anything as he stands and crosses the room along the length of the table. He creates a new chair for himself, right next to Merle’s, and sits down facing the dwarf with an absolutely unreadable expression. Merle turns to face John and folds his arms, and John finally  speaks. 

“Merle, you… you are the first person I’ve truly interacted with in a long time, and…” He pauses, sighs. “I don’t know if it’s because of that, or it’s because you are, as I said, one of the strangest individuals I’ve ever met, but… I have feelings, desires, Merle, I feel these  _ things _ for and towards you that I can’t even name.” 

John seems to catch himself and sits back slightly, and Merle is almost certain that, in the charged silence that falls, John can hear the way his heart is pounding, can sense the way his veins are filled with adrenaline and fear and hope and everything in between. 

“I’m not going to stay here for too much longer,” John finally says, just as Merle is beginning to think that maybe he should say something. “I… would you mind if I tried something different than the whole fire thing? There’s something that I want to try, and I think it might answer your question just a little more clearly.”

He leans towards Merle slightly, eyes glittering, face still inscrutable. Merle takes a deep breath - how bad can any way of dying really be, right? - and says, “Sure, why the hell not?”

John doesn’t reply to that, just looks Merle directly in the eyes. He’s so close now that Merle could count his eyelashes if he wanted to. “What are you going to-“ Merle starts, but he’s cut off by John placing a long, cool finger to his lips. 

“Just… don’t speak for a moment, Merle,” John says. His finger lingers against Merle’s chapped lips for just a second before he deftly twists his hand to the side so that he’s cupping Merle’s face in his palm. The tip of his thumb brushes Merle’s lower lip, and Merle can’t help the way his breath catches slightly. What the hell is John doing? The movements are almost… gentle. 

“Wh-“ 

“I said, don’t speak,” John repeats. His hand tightens around Merle’s cheek and jaw, scrunching Merle’s beard, just for a moment, before he seems to catch himself. “Sorry.” 

Merle doesn’t move. John’s face is inches from his own, and every point of contact between them - John’s fingers, Merle’s lips, their knees, John’s free hand coming up to cup the other side of Merle’s face - burns hotter than the fire that John would normally be using to kill Merle right about now. 

There’s a part of Merle that wants to question John again, there’s a part of him that wants to wrench away, there’s a part of him that wants to lean in closer, but it’s ultimately the part of him that wants to stay still that wins. His only movement is the pounding of his heart and the racing of his thoughts. 

Merle hasn’t been touched like this in, well, a long time, and he can’t quite fathom that the gentle, almost reverent hands holding his face belong to the goddamn evil, plane-consuming force that he’s been running from for decades now. It’s all just a bit too much, and he’s about to let the part of himself that’s ready to bolt win. But then John moves. 

He moves slowly, like he’s approaching a wild animal, and for just a second, there’s a look on his face that Merle can only describe as halfway between reverence and fear. The distance between them narrows, slowly, slowly, slowly, until it’s gone. 

Merle’s first thought is that holy shit, John has really soft lips. His second thought is a little less coherent and has a lot more to do with the fact that holy shit, he know what John’s - the goddamn Hunger’s - lips feel like, because John is kissing him. He tries to form a snarky response, something like, “I respect the confidence, but your kissing isn’t actually good enough to kill me,” but the only noise he manages to make is a soft groan as John slides a hand back and weaves his fingers into Merle’s hair. 

And well, at that point, what else is there to do but kiss back? So that’s exactly what Merle does.

He tries not to think about it too hard, tries to let himself be content with the answer to his question being attraction, tries not to think about how John apparently has a new plan to kill him, and just lets himself appreciate the fact that John is a very good kisser. 

Surprisingly, John’s movements remain almost… slow for what feels like hours. One of his hands stays securely against Merle’s cheek, while the other tugs just barely at Merle’s hair. It’s only when Merle grabs onto the lapels of John’s suit to pull him closer that John makes a not-so-soft sound, and Merle is suddenly reminded exactly what he calls the entity across from him. The Hunger. 

“Merle, I-” John gasps, finally pulling back slightly. His eyes have gone almost entirely dark; their only color comes from flecks of rec, blue, and green that look just like the pillars of the Hunger that Merle sees at the end of every cycle. “I can’t do this for much longer, I…” He swallows hard, Merle can see the way his Adam’s apple bobs, and says, “I’m going to go ahead and wrap this up.”

Merle can feel his heart rate pick up even higher. He’s died plenty of times by now, of course, but that doesn’t make it any more appealing, especially when he doesn’t know how it’s going to happen. “You sure you don’t want to, you know, keep this going for a little bit?” He forces a laugh, but John doesn’t even look like he hears it.

In fact, John looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin or something. The colors in his eyes are fading and giving way to more of that dark, dark black, and his posture has almost turned - not nervous, no, that’s not it - John’s  _ excited.  _

“No, I’m afraid we have to cut this short, as nice as it’s been,” John says. “Merle, this next part… well, it’s going to kill you, I won’t beat around the bush. But it’ll be, ah, I think you may actually find it pleasant for a moment if you don’t struggle. I’ve heard… nevermind.”

John leans back in and, despite his insistence that he needs to go, starts kissing Merle again. Only this time it’s different, more  _ wet _ , almost, Merle thinks, and - 

Merle opens his eyes. The first thing he sees is John’s inhuman eyes, staring directly back at him. The second thing he sees, or rather feels, is John’s mouth opening wider and sliding almost entirely over Merle’s own. And then it opens wider, slipping over Merle’s nose and muffling the confused and slightly alarmed noise that the dwarf makes. 

_ Don’t struggle,  _ Merle attempts to remind himself. He does his best to sit still and relegate all of his energy to trying to figure out what the hell John is doing. Fortunately or otherwise, he doesn’t have to wait long to figure it out.

John’s mouth opens  _ wider,  _ impossibly so, until his mouth is encompassing Merle’s entire head. His hands slide down, grab Merle’s shoulders, and lift, guiding Merle deeper into -

_ Oh, gods,  _ Merle thinks.  _ I’m getting fucking eaten by the fucking Hunger. _

John keeps pushing Merle further into his mouth, soaking him and his clothes through with saliva. Merle tries his best to stay still, because honestly, what the hell can he  _ do,  _ and besides, maybe he will find it pleasant like John said. He’s not here to kinkshame. So he stays as still and complacent as possible as John’s teeth lightly scrape over his chest, as John’s tongue slides down the length of his body, as he blinks his eyes open and finds himself staring down a dark tunnel that can only be John’s throat.

And then John swallows.

The way his throat convulses around Merle, the way it pushes Merle down, the way John’s mouth audibly snaps shut just behind Merle’s feet - Merle will never admit it, but it’s… not the worst sensation he’s ever felt. 

In fact, the tight walls of John’s throat - and stomach now, as John swallows again and again - wrap around Merle in such a gentle way that they’re almost reminiscent of John’s hands earlier. A groan escapes Merle’s lips, and he’s not even sure of the cause. 

John swallows once more, and Merle’s legs finally join the rest of him in the dark, wet confines of John’s stomach. Merle swears he can hear John gasp, start to choke on a word that may or may not start with M-

And that’s when the stomach acid starts to reach Merle’s skin, and the next thing he sees is the faces of his six crewmates as the Starblaster pulls them all back together. 

“Merle, did you learn anything?” Davenport asks.

Merle looks down at his hands, closes his eyes for a moment, and thinks back to parley. John’s voice, his lips on Merle’s as they  _ kissed,  _ the feeling of John’s stomach around him. He looks back up at Davenport and says, “I have no goddamn clue.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated!


End file.
